Son of No One (6 page)

“Shiny,” she breathed, running her hand over the ornate engraving on its surface. In addition to the traditional Celtic scrollwork were harps and cauldrons. In the center circle was the image of an oak tree with what appeared to be ruby apples hanging from its branches.

It was the only thing of true value that he owned, and it seemed oddly out of place. And unlike the other weapons, this one didn't have a ding or scratch on it. It was as pristine as the day it'd been created.

Yeah, okay, in a hobbit hole of oddities, this was the strangest of all.

And none of it gave her the slightest hint as to what kind of creature Cadegan might be. Assuming this was real and not a coma or dream. What kind of creature lived for hundreds of years and didn't age? Carried a rosary, ate food, lacked fangs …

None of it made sense.

For the first time in her life, she wished she'd paid more attention to her family's insanity and interests. Those loons could probably not only read the rune writing on his stuff, but they'd know exactly who and what he was. Someone in her family had probably even written a book on his breed.

She pulled the rosary from the bedpost and wove it around her fingers. On the back of the cross, worn Latin words were etched.
Pax Vobiscum
.…
Peace be with you
.

Yeah, that was strangely fitting for the quiet man who'd fought off her attackers with terrifying skill and ease. There was a peace to him that went against the violence she knew him capable of.

In that moment, she regretted chasing him away. But then that was what she did. Every man she'd ever been with had hit the door running. Some even screaming as they went.

Especially Barry.

In his defense, she'd been throwing flaming objects at him as she chased him out of her house. But that was another story.

Yet the saddest part? She didn't really miss her ex-husband. How could anyone be married for five years, after dating for two, and not cry over a divorce? She'd screamed plenty. Had even allowed Selena and Tabitha to make Voodoo dolls of him. And Karma to curse his penis.

But no tears. Not a single one.

What saddened her was the empty house. The vacant areas where his stuff had once been stored. She missed having a body around, especially at night.

I'm broken
.

That was why she loved her dogs so much. They didn't judge her and find her lacking. They never criticized. Rather, they loved her, even when she wasn't worthy of it.

Of course, they'd love anyone with the opposable thumbs required to open and dispense Alpo and Kibbles.

Yeah. Not wanting to think about the truth in that, she moved back to the tiny washstand that stood beside his chest and washed her makeup off. With nothing else to do, she went to bed and hoped that in the morning, she'd wake up in her own world.

But sleep didn't come as she lay nestled in furs that held the rich, masculine scent of the most enigmatic creature she'd ever met. It made her wonder where he was sleeping tonight. Surely he wasn't out there with those creatures.

Was he?

Why do you care?

Jo glanced around the stark, torchlit room and wondered how many countless nights Cadegan had lain here. In solitary agony. And in that moment, she realized why she cared.

No one deserved this.

“Cadegan?” she whispered. “If you can hear me, I'm sorry if I hurt you. And if you
can
hear me, can you come back? I hate to be alone. Please, don't leave me like this.”

A tear slid from the corner of her eye as the harshest reality of all bit her. Because she had such a humongous family, she'd never spent five minutes alone. It was the reason she had three dogs.

Her hell was isolation. She couldn't stand this feeling of being alone, with no one around.

As she wept silently, the shield began to glow and hum. Jo lifted her head to frown at it.

What the…?

Deep in the gold, a blurry male face glimmered.

 

4

Terrified, Jo pushed herself away from the shield as the face became more defined and clear.

“Jo?”

She froze as she saw Cadegan's image there, staring at her. “What the hell? Cade, we really need to chat about the size of your iPhone, buddy. Are you overcompensating for something? Hmmm?”

The baffled expression on his face said that he was completely clueless.

She smiled at him. “Sorry. We use iPhones to chat with images like this. But they're only this big.” She held her hand up to illustrate the size of it.

“Oh. I'd pondered that word before.” He paused. “Have you a need, lass?”

She nodded before she could stop herself. “Can you come back here?”

Adorably sheepish, he materialized beside the bed. With a stern scowl, he brushed a knuckle against her wet cheek. “Are you injured?”

Jo took his hand in hers and held on tight as she pressed it against her cheek. “I don't like to be alone. I know it's weird at my age, but there you have it.”

He offered her a kind smile. “It's not off. I more than ken your sadness at it.”

Of course he did. He knew the misery much better than she did.

Dropping her gaze to his other hand, she finally saw the blood that was drying there. “You're hurt?”

Nonchalant about it, he shrugged. “A grayling got in a nip earlier.”

“Grayling?”

“The knobby creatures what attacked you on your arrival. They be fast. Sometimes even faster than I.”

Jo got up and went to the washstand to wet another cloth. “Let me see the wound.”

He didn't move. “No worries. It'll heal, now, in a minute.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You keep saying that phrase, but it doesn't make any logical sense.
Now, in a minute
is a serious oxymoron.”

He snorted. “Fancy that, will you? Being criticized for me sentence by a woman I only understand every third word of.”

Laughing, she tugged at his robe. “Off with it, bunky. I want to check that wound.”

Cadegan hesitated before he obeyed. He pulled the robe over his head and folded it, then placed it on top of his holding chest.

She gave him an irritated smirk as she pinched at his mail tunic. “That was rather pointless, huh?”

With a half laugh, he untied then removed his chain mail and padded gambeson before he unlaced and rolled back the sleeve of his undertunic.

“Oh my God, you're like a Russian nesting doll. How many layers are you wearing?”

He shrugged at her shocked, teasing tone. “Just what I've always worn.”

Rolling her eyes, she pushed the sleeve back until she had the raw, jagged wound exposed. She cringed at the sight of it. It had to hurt like the dickens. Yet he didn't react to it at all. That more than anything told her how miserable an existence he lived.

Jo hesitated as she saw the true depth of the bite, as well as the number of other scars on his forearm. Claw marks, bites, and other things she couldn't even begin to guess at. His flesh was riddled with them. The strangest, though, were the ones wrapped around his right forearm and fingers that appeared to be row after row of diamond-shaped scars. It reminded her of a press of some sort that had waffled his arm. Had he caught it in a wringer or some such?

She ran her fingers over the odd scarred pattern. “What's this from?”

His cheeks mottled with color before he glanced away. “'Tis naught.”

“'Tis something. Why do they embarrass you?”

A tic started in his jaw. “They don't matter.” He started to pull away.

Jo held him by her side. “Then why not tell me?”

He fisted his right hand and sighed before he finally gave in. “When I was a lad, Brother Owain used to pinch at the coffers for his gambling. When Father Bryce noticed the missing coin, he blamed me for it, as I was the one Brother Owain said was the last in the room with it all. The scars are left from me hazard over it.”

Jo struggled to follow his words and understand the story. “Your brother did this to you?”

“Nay, I was an oblate.”

She held his arm as she washed at the clotting blood. “I don't know that word.”

“Me mother tossed me to the monks as soon as I was whelped. I was raised in the monastery, destined to take me vows.”

Well, that explained the Benedictine robe he wore. “Did you?”

He shook his head. “Right before I was to make them, the king came and took me to battle.”

That was a strange way to phrase it. Did he mean what it sounded like? “Kidnapped you?”

He snorted in bitter resentment. “He was king, lass. It was go willingly or die voluntarily.”

She winced at the awful choice he'd been given. It had to have been hard to go from a monk's life to war with so little warning. Which begged another question, especially if he'd been given to the monastery as an infant.… “Did you even know how to fight?”

“Nay, but battle learned me quick.”

She could just imagine. It was a wonder he hadn't been slaughtered the first day, and it explained a lot about the sword skills she'd witnessed on her arrival. “How old were you?”

“Ten-and-four.”

Her jaw dropped as she imagined a skinny little boy being dragged away from his home by armored knights to fight in a medieval battle. He must have been terrified. “You went to war at fourteen?” she asked incredulously.

“Aye.” It was a simple statement of emotionless fact. But she knew better than that. There was no way a child could be put through those horrors and not be scarred inside from it all. It was unfathomable.

And what they'd done to him was unconscionable.

As she cleaned his wound and really saw the deep scars those battles had left him with, her heart broke for him.

She fingered the diamond-shaped ones that had started her down this brutal path. “So what you're saying is that you were tortured because one of the monks was stealing from the monastery in order to gamble, and blamed you for the theft?”

He sighed wearily. “We're all brought up under a tub from time to time.”

“Meaning?”

“Sooner or later, all of us take the blame of another's ill actions.”

Truer words …

But it didn't take away the internal agony such things left behind. That sense of brutal betrayal. No one liked to be blamed for things they did, and to take the blame for something you didn't do was all the worse. Not to mention, Cadegan would have been younger than fourteen when they did that to him. How could a grown man allow a mere boy to suffer so for his crimes? She'd never understand such cruelty.

“I'm sorry, Cadegan.”

He shrugged. “No worries. Could be worse. Could've lost me hand entirely. Damn near. Luckily, it just left me coggy-handed.”

She frowned again at a term she'd never heard before. “Coggy-handed?”

“I primarily use me left hand, nowadays.” He glanced past her shoulder to see his rosary on the bed where she'd left it. Without a word, he returned it to the bedpost.

“Was that yours at the monastery?”

Nodding, he rolled his sleeve back down and laced it closed. “I shall leave you to sleep.”

As he started for the ladder, she caught his arm. “I really don't like to be alone. Can you stay in the loft with me?”

Cadegan glanced to the tiny bed before another rush of red stained his cheeks.

She wasn't immune to the thought herself, but her racing blood didn't go to her face. Rather, it went to a part of her body that made a demand she wasn't sure would be the smartest thing to do. Against reason, it begged for her to strip his clothes off and explore every vast inch of his hard body.

“Are you sure you want me up here with you, lass?”

“Please.”

Averting his gaze from the bed and her, he moved to sit on the floor, by his shield. With his legs stretched out before him, he folded his arms over his chest, lowered his head, and closed his eyes as if he intended to sleep that way.

It was such a sweet, innocent, and unassuming action that it made her smile.

“Cade,” she said in a chiding tone. “When I said stay in the loft, I meant share the bed with me.”

His eyebrows shot north as he opened his eyes and locked gazes with her. “Beg pardon?”

“We're both adults, right? We can share the bed and nothing else. You stay on your corner of the cot. I stay on mine.”

He actually pouted as he considered her proposal. After a few seconds, he nodded. “Very well, lass. If it pleases you.”

She toed her shoes off before she returned to the bed and rolled to her side to make room for him.

Cadegan hesitated at the sight of her in his bed. He'd never really shared a bed with anyone before. At least not for anything more than a few carnal hours.

And it had never been
his
bed, but rather the woman's.

A smile toyed at the edges of his lips as he watched her trying to get comfortable without a pillow. Since the austere abbot had considered any kind of comfort sinful, Cadegan had grown up without one. After he'd been conscripted to war, he'd had even fewer bodily comforts as they battled against the English.

He'd never given thought to it before this. Now … he manifested a pillow for her.

When he handed it to her, her entire face lit up. “Thank you!”

He gave a curt nod and watched as she promptly tucked it between her head and arm. She looked adorable like that. Preciously sweet, and much more tempting than she should be.

Trying not to focus on that untoward line of thought, he slid into bed beside her and gave her his back. He bent his arm under his head and closed his eyes to sleep, and not think about the warmth pressing up against his spine, or the gentle vanilla-almond scent that made his mouth water and his groin heavy.

He ground his teeth in an effort to squash his useless fantasies.